The Lord's Prayer...Week 7

"This, then, is how you should pray: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.' " —Matthew 6:9–15 (NIV)

Lead Us Not Into Temptation:

These words of the last petition of the Lord's Prayer come from our lips with greatest fervor. We have turned to prayer in a desperate hour to plead for deliverance and we ask that we may be taken out of the path of temptation.

There is no doubt in the mind of any one who is in trouble what the words of this petition mean, and there is rather little doubt, at least at first, what we wished to be saved from.

Temptation has sly ways, however. After we have all the gaps plugged. Temptation begins to whisper fairy tales into our ears, trying to get us to open up at least one of the gaps. Temptation hints that the diagnosis we made when we took the first of the Twelve Steps was not quite right. Why not take just one now and then? And why not ask to be delivered from the temptation of taking more than one? But then, three would be better, why not never more than three?

Or, Temptation may make a more direct assault. We're as big as God is: we can step off that cliff!

Well, maybe not quite; but we are capable of handling ourselves, and there is no reason why we cannot go down to the water's edge and wade around a bit! We forget that for us there is no shallow water.

Temptation stays with us, trying to build up our confidence, trying to make us believe that we have been cured, scoffing at the old troubles. Temptation slips in at the side door when we become proud and satisfied. It is the greatest to those who have persisted in remaining at the threshold of evil by always having that "Some day!" in the back of the mind. The most persistent temptation we have is the temptation to change the diagnosis. When we turn our backs firmly against that temptation we are likely to stay out of trouble.

Self love is a great pitfall, and the source of the great sins. Many of the temptations here seem rather innocent. But they lead, step by step to denial of the Supreme Power, to exaltation of the self.

For us, deliverance and temptation go together, and one of the most important evils that we seek to be freed from is temptation. Drink has become so much a part of our lives that we associate virtually
every act with it. The result is that the idea of drink, the urge to take a drink or to go to get a drink constantly pops into the mind for no apparent reason. The Devil here is experience.

As our sins may be forgiven if we are truly contrite, so may we be delivered from the evils we have created for ourselves, by being sorry for our misdeeds, by undertaking to make good for any injury we have done to others, and by striving not to offend again. We are bound to take positive action for the right and the good, and we are bound not to allow ourselves drift with our inclinations. We place
ourselves in the hands of the Supreme Power and follow the lead we receive from that power, away from temptation, away from evil.

[* Reprinted from a series of eight editorial articles written in 1944 and first published in the Cleveland Central Bulletin an Alcoholics Anonymous newsletter.]